ISTANBUL — At a recent rally to open the campaign before municipal elections in March, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was heckled by a group of public workers demanding jobs. But he was having none of it.

“Do not expect anything from us,” a visibly angry Mr. Erdogan scolded the upstarts at the rally in the eastern province of Sivas. “I’m not an ordinary politician and do not provoke this meeting.”

Other supporters cheered, drowning out the protest. But it was a moment telling of Mr. Erdogan’s vulnerability as ordinary Turks feel the deepening pain of the country’s economic slide for the first time in his 17 years in power.

After long unbroken growth, Turkey is entering a recession amid falling investor confidence and a credit crisis. Bankruptcies have increased. Unemployment and inflation have hit double digits. Rising prices, especially at the vegetable markets, have become a national obsession....

US warns Turkey not to buy Russian S-400 missile systemMoving forward with the deal will jeopardise the F-35 fighter jet purchase and other future arms transfers, US says.10 hours ago

The United States warned Turkey against moving ahead with plans to buy a sophisticated Russian missile defence system that the Pentagon believes would threaten its advanced F-35 fighter aircraft.

The State Department made the remarks on a day when the head of US European Command spoke to politicians on Capitol Hill and said Turkey should reconsider its plan to buy the S-400 from Russia this year.

"We've clearly warned Turkey that its potential acquisition of the S-400 will result in a reassessment of Turkey's participation in the F-35 programme, and risk other potential future arms transfers to Turkey," said deputy spokesman Robert Palladino on Tuesday....

Turkey falls into recession for first time in a decadeThe release of new figures, which show worst economic performance since 2009, comes just weeks before local polls.22 hours ago

Turkey's economy fell into its first recession in a decade at the end of last year, official data has shown, as the country heads towards key local elections at the end of the month.

Gross domestic product (GDP) in the fourth quarter fell by a seasonally adjusted 2.4 percent compared with the previous three months, the Turkish Statistics Institute said on Monday. The drop followed a contraction of 1.6 percent in the third quarter.

Two consecutive quarter-on-quarter contractions in economic output is widely considered to be the definition of a recession.

Despite the downturn, which was expected by economists and analysts, Turkish Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said, "The worst is behind, in terms of economic activity".

"The worst forecasts were not realised," he wrote on Twitter after the data was published....

"As of 8:00 this morning, we started an operation with Iran aimed at the PKK on our eastern border," he told a crowd in the Mediterranean city of Antalya. "We will announce the outcome [later]."

Soylu, who first spoke of the planned offensive on March 6, did not provide further details....

Snip... Alexey Khlebnikov, a Middle East analyst at the Russian International Affairs Council, said if Turkey and Iran were indeed cooperating against the Kurds, it could have wider implications for the region.

"It might be seen as a strong message to Kurds in Syria and to the US," he said. "Ankara-Tehran military cooperation might be well extended to Syria."...

Lira traders braced for the results of Turkey’s local elections this Sunday following a week of turmoil that rattled faith in the nation’s markets.

While the currency slowed its slide, stocks gained and swap rates began to normalize on Friday, investors warned the volatility could spike again. Commerzbank AG analysts said they were struggling to gauge how much selling pressure would remain after the vote, which is seen as a key test of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule. TD Securities strategist Cristian Maggio predicted the lira could sink as much as 30 percent in the second quarter.

Roller-Coaster Ride“It’s not a market that I think is worth touching right now,” Timothy Graf, the head of EMEA macro strategy at State Street Bank & Trust, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Thursday. “It’s very difficult to short the currency at least, given how expensive that has become.” If investors decide to go long, the market can move against them very quickly, he said....

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turks voted on Sunday in local elections which President Tayyip Erdogan has described as a matter of survival for Turkey and which were tarnished by violence that left two party members dead in the country’s southeast.

Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than 16 years thanks in part to strong economic growth, has become the country’s most popular, yet also most divisive, leader in modern history.

However, he could be dealt an electoral blow with polls indicating his ruling AK Party (AKP) may lose control of the capital Ankara, and even Istanbul, the country’s largest city.

With the economy contracting following a currency crisis last year in which the lira lost more than 30 percent of its value, some voters appeared ready to punish Erdogan, who has ruled with an increasingly uncompromising stance.

“I was actually not going to vote today, but when I saw how much they (AKP) were flailing, I thought this might be time to land them a blow. Everyone is unhappy. Everyone is struggling,” said 47-year-old Hakan after voting in Ankara....

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan suffered stunning setbacks in local elections as his ruling AK Party lost control of the capital Ankara for the first time since the party’s founding in 2001, possibly complicating his plans to fight back recession.

Both the AKP and the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) claimed victory in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and economic hub. The AKP said it had “plenty of” evidence of voting irregularities in Istanbul.

Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics since coming to power 16 years ago and ruled his country with an ever tighter grip, campaigned relentlessly for two months ahead of Sunday’s vote, which he described as a “matter of survival” for Turkey.

But his daily rallies and overwhelmingly supportive media coverage failed to win over voters in the two main cities, as last year’s punishing currency crisis weighed heavily on Turks....

ISTANBUL — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party has lost control of Turkey’s two largest cities, Istanbul and Ankara, a complete tally of local election ballots showed on Tuesday, but the governing party said it would challenge the outcomes.

The loss of Istanbul, the country’s business capital and Mr. Erdogan’s political base, is a particularly sharp setback for a president who has tightened his control of the government and news media, stifled dissent, and, critics contend, manipulated election results.

Results reported on Tuesday by the semiofficial Anadolu news agency showed the opposition candidate for mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, at 48.79 percent, against 48.51 percent for Binali Yildrim, the candidate of Mr. Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, or AKP, with 100 percent of ballots counted....

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Tuesday indicated that he expects Turkey to abandon its plans to buy a Russian air defense system, a day after Washington halted all deliveries of F-35 fighter aircraft equipment to the NATO ally over the purchase.

Shanahan said he was “very confident” that Turkey would choose to buy the American-made Patriot anti-missile system over Russia’s S-400 long-range air defense system.

“I expect we'll solve the problem so that they have the right defense equipment in terms of Patriots and F-35s,” Shanahan told reporters at the Pentagon prior to meeting with his Mongolian counterpart....

The election results in Istanbul, now disputed by the AKP, put the opposition candidate into the lead by a margin of 23,000 votes in a city with 10.5 million voters.

"Though Turkey's government and many commentators are blaming the Trump administration and foreign speculators for the country's economic downturn, the reality is that it was already 'baked into the cake' many years ago due to the credit bubble that formed." — Jesse Colombo, Forbes.

Simple religious Islamist conservative and ultra-nationalist populism are still keeping Erdoğan in power, but there are signs that, if the economy keeps getting worse, those forces may not be able to save him. There are signs that this is taking place....

God Bless

David

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God

"When Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, virtually all of the city's surviving cathedrals and churches were — after being desecrated and thoroughly plundered — forcibly seized and turned over to the Turks' religious establishment to be converted to mosques and used as Muslim properties." — Dr. Alexandros K. Kyrou, professor of history, Salem State University.

Nine other former Hagia Sophia churches are either being used as mosques already or are in the process of being renovated for this purpose. The youngest of these, in Trabzon, was converted into a mosque in 2013. — Ersoy Soydan, assistant professor of communications at Kastamonu University and author of Churches and Monasteries in Turkey

Sadly, Turkey's Greek community as a whole, let alone that of Istanbul by itself, is not sizeable enough to oppose or protest infringements on their historic cathedral. The 1914-1923 genocide of Greek Christians in Anatolia, and subsequent atrocities against the survivors -- such as the 1955 anti-Greek pogroms in Istanbul -- have almost completely wiped out the region's Greek populace.

God Bless

David

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God

The lira weakened more than any other currency on Thursday amid speculation that the central bank was using money borrowed from commercial banks in short-term swaps to inflate its foreign reserve figures. It sank nearly 2 percent on growing concerns before paring some of those losses.

Here’s a quick look at what’s going on:

How much does Turkey hold in foreign currency reserves?That depends on what you count. Net international reserves as defined by the International Monetary Fund stood at $28.4 billion in the week through April 12. But the central bank says it’s misleading to focus on the net figures and instead urges investors to look at its gross reserves, which amount to a little under $98 billion....

ANKARA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Turkey’s hopes of avoiding punishing U.S. sanctions over its purchase of a Russian air defense system appear increasingly pinned on intervention from Donald Trump, but the president has little leeway to counter Ankara’s many critics in Washington.

The two NATO allies have argued for months over Turkey’s order for the advanced S-400 missile defense batteries, which Washington says are incompatible with the Western alliance’s defense network and would pose a threat to U.S. F-35 stealth fighter jets which Turkey also plans to buy.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and several prominent U.S. senators have warned Turkey it will face penalties for buying the S-400s under legislation which calls for sanctions against countries procuring military equipment from Russia. Turkey says as a NATO member it poses no threat to the United States and the sanctions should not apply.

Resolving the dispute could allow the two governments to turn the corner on years of tense relations. The stakes are higher for Turkey, which is mired in recession after a separate U.S. diplomatic dispute last year sparked a currency crisis that has echoed in recent weeks as ties have again frayed....

The Memory of the Armenian Genocide Should Be PreservedBy MARLO SAFI April 24, 2019 11:11 AM

Today Raqqa, on the banks of the Euphrates in northeastern Syria, not far from modern-day Turkey, is infamous as the onetime capital of the ISIS caliphate, its name synonymous with the horrors suffered under the caliphate’s barbaric Salafi rule. But the city’s history of trauma is not new. In 1915, Arab bedouins living there began reporting a chilling sight: disheveled and emaciated people, dressed in rags, walking aimlessly through the desert. Most of these poor souls were Armenians, sent on a death march through the Syrian desert by the genocidal Ottoman regime.

The woman who raised my grandmother was one of the victims of the Armenian genocide. She made it further than Raqqa, beginning in Ottoman Turkey and ending in a village in Homs, where my great-great grandfather, an Orthodox priest, took her in as a refugee. Her name was Yester, but my mother and her siblings would call her by the Arabized “Yakhsa,” or, more simply, “Sittay,” the Arabic word for “my grandmother.”

My uncle was ten years old when she told him why she’d fled to Syria. She lived in a village in Turkey heavily populated by Armenians, and her life changed in October 1915, when the Ottoman military raided the village while she was in her garden with her two children, aged two and four. She managed to hide herself and the kids, but from hiding she witnessed her husband get struck over the head by the soldiers as they gathered all of the men ages 13 and over in the town square to be publicly beheaded. She fled Turkey, aimlessly running and eventually finding herself in Syria. Her relief was fleeting; the Ottomans captured her and her children in the Syrian desert, and ordered her to renounce Christ and convert to Islam. When she refused, they killed her two children and threw them into the Euphrates. Her only request before she died in 1971 was that the cloth diaper she had held onto as the Ottoman soldier ripped her child from her arms be buried with her....

"Bad economic management, among others, brought him [Erdoğan] to power ... It may remove him power, too." -- International banker who asked not to be named.

Ironically, the man who could recharge the machine called Erdoğan & Co. (or push it over the cliff) is the president's son-in-law, Berat Albayrak.

In December 2015, Russia's defense ministry said it had proof that Erdoğan and his family were benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq. "Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq.

So, guess when and where wonder boy Albayrak last came to the attention of the U.S. public? On April 16, when he met with President Donald Trump in Washington. A smiling Albayrak happily announced that Trump took a reasonable point of view regarding Turkey's planned purchase of the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system. He also said that there was agreement at his meetings in Washington to increase annual bilateral trade between the United States and Turkey to $75 billion....

God Bless

David

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God

Erdogan opens Turkey's largest mosque in IstanbulCamlica Mosque, which has a combination of Ottoman and Seljuk architectural style, can accommodate 63,000 worshippers. 17 hours ago

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated Turkey’s largest and newest mosque on Friday.

Construction on the Camlica Mosque Complex began in 2013 and has a capacity of 63,000 worshippers. The previous Turkish record holder in capacity was a mosque in the southern province of Adana. Sabanci Central Mosque, which opened in 1998, can host 28,500 worshippers.

Snip... "Those who attack mosques or those who target churches share the same dark mentality, they're all common enemies of humanity," Erdogan added....

Turkey will not bow to US sanctions over S-400: Vice presidentFuat Oktay says US concerns over the Russian-made defence system are not reasonable, adding Ankara will not back down.3 hours ago

Turkey will never bow to US sanctions over its agreement to buy Russian S-400 defence systems, Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay said on Sunday in reference to a deal that has strained ties between the NATO allies.

Washington has said the S-400s could compromise the capabilities of its F-35 fighter jets - for which it has a separate deal with Turkey - and warned of possible US sanctions if Ankara pushed on with the Russian deal.

Ankara has said the S-400s and F-35s would not affect each other and that it will not abandon the former.

Speaking in an interview with broadcaster Kanal 7, Oktay said United States concerns on the issue were not reasonable and added that Turkey would not back down....

Mr Erdogan was defending the decision to re-run the 31 March vote, which returned a slim win for the opposition.

Opposition candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, who has been stripped of his duties, described the move as "treacherous".

The European Parliament also said the decision would end the credibility of democratic elections in Turkey.

The decision to hold a new vote, which will be held on 23 June, sparked protests across the city on Monday. Hundreds of people gathered in several districts, banging pots and pans and shouting anti-government slogans....

Snip... And Mr Erdogan's own party is deeply split on the issue. His diehard loyalists believe victory was stolen. But other wings of the party accept they lost, and that rejecting the result is another nail in the coffin for what's left of Turkish democracy....

Turkey's main opposition party has asked authorities to annul last year's national elections as well as the entire Istanbul city election in March, following a decision to rerun only the mayoral vote.

The Republican People's Party (CHP) said on Wednesday that votes for Istanbul officials and councils should be cancelled if the mayoral vote is rerun. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development (AK) Party won a majority in the councils.

Following appeals by the AK Party, citing irregularities in the appointment of polling station officials, the High Election Board on Monday ordered a rerun of the Istanbul mayoral election, which the CHP's Ekrem Imamoglu won with a slim majority.

ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey’s Treasury ministry is working on legislation to transfer the central bank’s 40 billion lira ($6.6 billion) in legal reserves to the government’s budget to shore it up, three economic officials told Reuters.

The budget deficit is deeper than expected, said the sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. It was unclear when or whether the draft law would reach parliament, though one of the sources said it would happen “soon”.

If enacted, the transfer would mark the latest unorthodox attempt by President Tayyip Erdogan’s government to pull Turkey out of recession and steady the lira following last year’s currency crisis.

The lira has come under renewed pressure in the past two months partly due to investor worries over the central bank’s depleted foreign exchange reserves. These are separate to the “legal reserves” and help defend it against another crisis.

The “legal reserves” are what the central bank sets aside from profits by law to be used in extraordinary circumstances. At end-2018, they stood at 27.6 billion lira, according to the bank’s balance sheet data....

The official Facebook page of Turkey's pro-government daily, Sabah, for example, is filled with praise for the destruction of the cathedral.

Sadly, Islamic supremacism not only targets the churches of Western Christians. It targets Yazidi, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Hindu temples too. These religious minorities in the Muslim world are completely vulnerable, defenseless and severely persecuted.... In many Muslim countries, Muslim-on-Muslim violence is also quite commonplace. The Islamic hatred of different religious groups is not about geography -- the East or the West. It is about religious faith.

What is heartbreaking is that arson and other forms of desecration of churches have been going on in France and other countries on a regular basis, with barely a mention by the media or Western governments....

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said Turkey and Russia would jointly produce S-500 defence systems after Ankara's controversial purchase of the S-400 missile defence system from Moscow.

Turkey's push to buy the S-400s has further strained the already tense relations with the United States, which has repeatedly warned Ankara of the risks, including sanctions, if it goes ahead with the purchase.

"There is absolutely no question of [Turkey] taking a step back from the S-400 purchase. That is a done deal," Erdogan said on Saturday in Istanbul....

Turkey is staring down a June deadline to cancel its purchase of a Russian missile system, according to a new report.

If it receives its purchase of the S-400 next month, the country will be ousted from Lockheed Martin’s F-35 program and will not receive 100 of the fighter jets it has ordered, and will also face U.S.-imposed sanctions, CNBC reports.

Instead, the U.S. has proposed that Turkey purchase Raytheon’s U.S.-made Patriot missile defense system so it can remain in the F-35 program....

Ankara, Turkey - President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday unveiled a package of judicial reforms after years of criticism over a crackdown on dissidents and the jailing of thousands said to be linked to a 2016 coup attempt.

Speaking from his palace in Ankara, the president took aim at the European Union, which a day earlier released a damning report on Turkey's bid to join the union.

In its annual progress review, the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, accused Ankara of "serious backsliding in the areas of the rule of law and fundamental rights"....

MOSCOW/ANKARA (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Friday it was Turkey’s responsibility to stop rebels in Syria’s Idlib province from firing on civilian and Russian targets, signalling it would continue to back a Syrian government offensive there despite Ankara’s protests.

FILE PHOTO: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia April 8, 2019. Maxim Shipenkov/Pool via REUTERS/File PhotoTurkish President Tayyip Erdogan told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin late on Thursday that he wanted a ceasefire in Idlib to prevent more civilian deaths and a refugee influx to Turkey.

Erdogan also told Putin by phone that Syria needed a political solution, Erdogan’s office said in a statement....

Snip... “We really do need a ceasefire in Idlib and what needs to be achieved is for the terrorists to stop firing on civilian targets and on certain facilities where our troops are located,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters when asked about Erdogan’s request for a ceasefire.

What can stop Turkey's economy from unravelling? | Counting the CostAl Jazeera English Published on Jun 2, 2019

Istanbul plays an oversized role in the Turkish economy and politics. It has been the gateway to the presidency for Recep Tayyip Erdogan and represents a third of the country's economy.

After a quarter of a century, Erdogan lost the battle to control the financial capital but controversially another vote to elect the mayor has been planned.

It is just one of a number of issues that has many people and businesses losing faith in the country. After a credit-fuelled boom led to bust many are switching to the dollar. Foreign exchange deposits and funds rose to a record high of $182bn this month....

Erdogan: No step back from S-400 deal with RussiaTurkish president says US offer to sell Patriot missiles to Ankara is not as good as Russia's S-400 offer.6 hours ago

Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country would not step back from an S-400 missile deal with Russia - again defying US threats.

Last week, a top Pentagon official said the consequences would be "devastating" for Turkey's joint F-35 fighter programme and its cooperation with NATO if the country went ahead with plans to buy the Russian anti-aircraft weapon system.

"There is an agreement. We have determination. It is out of the question to take a step back from it," Erdogan told reporters in Istanbul on Tuesday....

Snip... Ankara responded saying it was the US refusal to sell Patriots to Turkey that led it to seek other vendors, adding Russia offered a better deal, including technology transfers....

TurkStream will not enhance Bulgaria’s energy security, but instead deepen its dependence on Russian natural gasIn an interview on May 30 with the Bulgarian edition of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s journal “International Relations,” Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov delivered a common Kremlin narrative to justify TurkStream, the new export gas pipeline that Gazprom is building under the Black Sea to western Turkey.

The US Pentagon has notified Turkey that it is cancelling its purchase of F-35 fighter jets if the Turkish government goes ahead with the purchase of a Russia's S-400 missile defence system.

Acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan has sent a letter notifying Turkey that all training of Turkish pilots will also end as of July 31. And all Turkish personnel connected to the F-35 programme must leave the country by the end of that month.

Shanahan's letter explicitly states there will be "no new F-35 training". It says there were 34 students scheduled for F-35 training later this year.

"This training will not occur because we are suspending Turkey from the F-35 programme; there are no longer requirements to gain proficiencies on the systems," according to an attachment to the letter that is titled, "Unwinding Turkey's Participation in the F-35 Program."...

At the heart of the matter is a culture that programs most less-educated masses (and in Turkey average schooling is 6.5 years) into a) converting the "other" and, if that is not possible, b) physically hurting the "other." A deep societal polarization since President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power in 2002 has widened to frightening levels.

After opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu was taken to a safehouse, members of the mob surrounded it and chanted, "Let's burn down the house!"

Apparently each unpunished case of political violence committed on behalf of the dominant state ideology (Islamism) and its sacrosanct leader (Erdoğan) encourages the next. In May, a journalist critical of Erdoğan's government and its nationalist allies was hospitalized after being attacked outside his home....

**** Almost sounds like another country we know and love. D. ****

God Bless

David

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God

Erdogan: Purchase of Russian S-400 air defence systems completeThe Turkish leader says he will speak to President Trump, as Washington threatens to cut Ankara from F-35 programme.11 hours ago

Turkey has already purchased S-400 defence systems from Russia and hopes they will be delivered in July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, an announcement likely to ratchet up tensions with NATO ally Washington.

Turkey and the United States have sparred publicly for months over Ankara's order for the S-400s, which are not compatible with NATO's systems.

"Turkey has already bought S-400 defence systems. It is a done deal. I hope these systems will be delivered to our country next month," Erdogan said....

The US and Turkey - one of Washington's key Nato allies - appear to be on a collision course this summer.

Turkey insists it will go ahead with the purchase of an advanced Russian S-400 air defence system. The first missiles and their associated radars could start to be delivered in July.

The US is urging Ankara to re-consider. It is warning that if the deal goes ahead then Turkey will be cut out of the F-35 warplane programme - the advanced US aircraft that will equip many Nato air forces over the coming decade.

So this is a controversy that has security, strategic and industrial dimensions. It raises questions about Turkey's reliability as a Nato partner and the diplomatic course that it is pursuing. And given its key geographical location on the alliance's southern flank - not to mention its role in the Syrian crisis - Turkey is not a country that Nato can turn its back on.

Washington's concerns about Turkey's purchase of the S-400 stem from both practical and security considerations....

Washington claimed it would trigger economic warfare on Ankara if Turkey went ahead with its deal to buy S-400 missiles from Moscow. The US, who recently sold 100 F-35 fighter jets to Turkey, see the S-400 missile systems as a threat and said Turkey could not have both at the same time. However, President Erdogan’s administration pledged to respond to any aggression with action of their own.

Foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said: "If the United States takes any negative actions towards us, we will also take reciprocal steps.

"We are determined on the S-400 issue. No matter what the results will be, we will not take a step back.”...

Syria says it doesn't want to fight with TurkeyDamascus says military action in response to rebel violations, including presence of fighters in a demilitarised zone.18 Jun 2019

Syria does not want to see fighting with Turkey, its foreign minister said on Tuesday, after Ankara said one of its posts in Syria's Idlib region was attacked from an area controlled by Syrian government forces.

Russia, which supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his country's civil war, and Turkey, long a backer of the rebels fighting him, co-sponsored a de-escalation pact for the area that has been in place since last year.

But the deal has faltered in recent months, forcing hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee. About 300 people have been killed by Syrian and Russian air raids and shelling in the area since late April, according to the United Nations.

Idlib, in Syria's northwest along the border with Turkey, is the last remaining bastion of anti-government rebels after eight years of civil war....

"Greek settlements in Asia Minor date as far back as the 11th century BC when Greeks emigrated from mainland Greece." -- Asia Minor and Pontos Hellenic Research Center

Today, less than half a percent of Turkey's population is Christian.

The hostility of the Turkish people in Anatolia seems the result of having been indoctrinated with false information since childhood. Ironically, many Turks who harbor ill will towards Greeks are most likely of Greek origin and are actually insulting no one but their own Greek ancestors and themselves....

God Bless

David

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God

As the scale of Ekrem Imamoglu's victory became clear, his supporters thronged his election headquarters. Lining the street outside was a row of cameras. Among them: Turkey's state broadcaster TRT, heavily under the thumb of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

A woman approached, waving her Turkish flag bearing the face of Mr Imamoglu at the TRT cameraman. "Now are you going to film us?", she cried, "we're here, now show we are!"

It encapsulated the feeling of an opposition that has been stifled for years, all the organs of the Turkish state controlled by Turkey's powerful, polarising leader. Finally, the other side of this country feels as though the hand that has covered its mouth has been unclasped....

The invincible Erdoğan took a great risk: a second loss for the man who thinks "who wins Istanbul wins Turkey" would mean just more than just an embarrassing mayoral loss. Comparatively speaking, the difference in votes between Imamoğlu and Erdoğan's candidate, Yıldırım, widened within less than two months from 13,000 to nearly 800,000.

""It appears that losing Istanbul entails too many risks for the AKP for the matter to be left to its own resources. Many are convinced that if the AKP were to lose Istanbul to the opposition, after having held it – with its precursor – for 25 years, a hornet's nest of vested interests, corruption, and abuse of power would be revealed" — Semih Idiz, a columnist for Sigma Turkey, an Ankara-based think tank.

The more the public feels the economic pressure, the more Erdoğan's popularity will sink....

God Bless

David

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God

Donald Trump said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was treated unfairly by the Obama administration when he sought to buy an American anti-aircraft missile system, and indicated he may reassess sanctions he’s threatened if Turkey goes ahead with a Russian purchase instead.

“They wouldn’t let him buy the missile he wanted to buy, which was the Patriot,” Trump told reporters on Saturday at the start of a meeting with Erdogan on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan. “You have to treat people fairly. And I don’t think he was treated fairly.”

Trump’s statement isn’t accurate. The U.S. has sought to sell Ankara the Patriot air-defense missile since at least 2013, but Erdogan has insisted it come with a transfer of technology so that Turkey can develop and build its own missiles. The Obama administration declined....

Erdogan: US scrapping F-35 jet deal with Turkey would be robberyAnkara faces new strains in US relationship over upcoming delivery of Russian S-400 missile system.20 minutes ago

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said it would be "robbery" for the United States to deny Turkey the F-35 fighter jets it has bought, according to remarks published in Turkish media.

"If you have a customer and that customer is making payments like clockwork, how can you not give that customer their goods? The name of that would be robbery," the national Hurriyet newspaper quoted Erdogan as saying on Thursday, as Turkey faces potential US sanctions over its purchase of the Russian S-400 missile system.

He said that Turkey had so far paid $1.4bn for the F-35s and that four jets had been handed over, with Turkish pilots going to the US for training....

Istanbul’s New Mayor Quickly Emerges as a Rival to ErdoganIstanbul’s new mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, center, said he would push back against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authoritarianism.By Carlotta Gall July 3, 2019

ISTANBUL — Even before he began his first day at work as Istanbul’s new mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu was being talked about as the man who could challenge President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the leadership of Turkey in four years’ time.

For the moment he is avoiding the question, and insists that he will concentrate for the next five years on serving Istanbul, a sprawling metropolis of 15 million inhabitants, a quarter of whom live below the poverty line.

“Right now I am a person who is fully concentrated on governing,” he told foreign journalists at a news briefing on his first day in office last Friday. “But if there are those who see our star high in the sky, we thank them.”

There is no doubt that he presents a broader threat to the president. Mr. Imamoglu said he fully intended to use the enormous popular support that elected him by a surprisingly wide margin in a rerun on June 23 as a mandate to push back against Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarianism and bring democracy and fairness to all of Turkey.

“It turned into the struggle of a nation,” the new mayor said of the election, which was redone after Mr. Erdogan’s party alleged irregularities and challenged its loss in a March vote. “This was an election about Istanbul, it was at the same time a struggle for democracy.”...

Turkey: No country for bold journalists? | The Listening PostAl Jazeera EnglishPublished on Jul 7, 2019

Last month, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan held a rare press briefing for journalists in the country's media capital, Istanbul. In his opening remarks, Erdogan said that freedom of the press was of "vital importance" to him.

It was a statement that failed to square with the facts, let alone the numbers. Because for each of the last three years - ever since July of 2016, when an attempted coup failed to depose the president - Turkey has imprisoned more journalists than any other country.

For all of those jailed, however, the government has prosecuted a much longer list of media workers whose fates still hang in the balance. It's a state of limbo that has driven many of the accused into exile, to seek asylum abroad....

(CNN)The first shipment of the Russian-made S-400 air defense missile system has landed in Ankara, in a move that sets up a potential showdown between Turkey and the United States.

The equipment arrived at the Murted Air Base on Friday, according to the Turkish Defense Ministry.

Another plane is due to fly to Turkey with a second batch of equipment in the near future, a military-diplomatic source told Russia's state-run TASS news agency. That source added that a third delivery, carrying over "120 anti-aircraft missiles of various types" will be delivered "tentatively at the end of the summer, by sea."

TASS also quoted the source saying that Turkish S-400 operators will travel to Russia for training in July and August. About 20 Turkish servicemen underwent training at a Russian training center in May and June, according to the source....

Snip... The Pentagon could formally suspend Turkey from participation in the F-35 program altogether....

Erdogan may be intelligent enough to understand that things do not always go the way one likes. He led a remarkable economic resurgence in Turkey but is now presiding over what looks like an economic meltdown with rampant inflation, falling productivity and shrinking job opportunities. Rather than calming things down, his authoritarian moves, including the sacking of the Central Bank governor, have intensified the crisis. His trademark "no-enemies" foreign policy has been replaced by a policy that seems designed to turn everyone, including NATO allies and European Union partners, not to mention Arab states, against Turkey.

His party's claim of being "whiter than white" is hard to sustain as his entourage sinks deeper in the grey of corruption. More importantly, his success in persuading the "backward" half of Turkey that it could gain power through elections no longer enjoys the same level of support it once did even in deep Anatolia.

Good or bad, the once-successful Erdogan recipe seems not to be working anymore. The bashkhan has read his text, played his part and has nothing new to utter. The play has to go on but, for him, the finger may be pointing to exit....

God Bless'David

Eph 2:8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump says Turkey will be banned from purchasing American F-35 fighter jets after it acquired a Russian air defense system, but made no mention of sanctions that the US is legally required to impose in response, worrying lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Trump misrepresented the developments that led Turkey to purchase the Russian system, blaming the Obama administration for the situation and sympathizing with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the "very tough situation that they've been forced in."

"Because they have a system of missiles that's made in Russia, they're now prohibited from buying over 100 planes," Trump said of Turkey during in a Cabinet meeting. "I would say that (F-35 manufacturer) Lockheed isn't exactly happy. That's a lot of jobs. And frankly I've always had a very good relationship" with Erdogan, Trump added.

In the tussle with Turkey over the Russian air defense system, a thorny mix of diplomatic and technological challenges are intersecting with the President's affinity for strongmen leaders and his tendency to execute international diplomacy based on his personal relationships....

Just curious what will happen to the parts of the F-35 which are manufactured in Turkey? Will Turkey still manufacture them and will they be available to Lockheed? Or will Mr. Erdogan just shut them off?